The Liberals and NDP need to up their housing game before the next election. They’re more worried about protecting paper gains for existing homeowners than than getting prices back to affordable levels.
Why is the Liberal Party still droning on about protecting high home values while promising to make new home ownership easy? The Liberals should drop this obvious lie – voters can see the impact of housing speculation on increasing generational wealth inequalities for themselves – and heed their own legislation by focusing on the federal role in ensuring renters’ equal rights.
And why is NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh prioritizing owners’ returns over renter rights? British Columbia, which is the only NDP government in power in Canada, is the most pro-housing supply province. Build on that. Income-based housing targets, leasing public land to scale up non-market housing, and tax change to lessen wealth inequalities should be talking points for the “workers party” right now.
My pet peeve is the provincial policy that as well pushes the needle to be expensive.
I own a home in Calgary that is zoned to allow for secondary suites. I already have a kitchen down there. I wanted to add a walk-out exit but the province said no, unless:
I redo the HVAC for the whole house so that the basement is on a completely isolated loop with a completely seperate furnace, and I rip apart the roof and walls to apply sound dampening materials.
The hurdle is insane. I spent a great portion of my life living in basement suites without either of those… And much worse!
I’m all about safety, but this is far past that.
We talk about densifying urban spaces but the new regulations make it cost prohibitive to do so on an existing build. I’d love to help ease the stress on the INSANE rental market in Calgary… But even provincial policy makes it extremely difficult to densify.